FIC: Laser Control Chronicles, chapter 1 [Tron (Legacy), Yori x Tron & OCs]
Summary: Digitization: one part magic, three parts hard work by Yori and the rest of the laser control crew. Resistance: the only thinkable course of action when red once again swarms the system and takes Tron away from her.
Author’s Note: Vaguely AU for Evolution, because while I like the new characters it introduces, I prefer different versions of Tron and Quorra’s backstory. Seriously, they have like three different canon versions each, depending on what part of the franchise you’re looking at.
The underwater control center was bright and loud with activity when Yori, Visper and Anemone teleported in. A quick look around told Yori they were the last to arrive; the rest of the laser control crew was already busily calibrating pods, opening windows on their display panels, and otherwise preparing for the work ahead. The others must have still been in the nearby residential folder, dutifully awaiting Flynn’s arrival, when the Call came. Yori had given up such piety long ago. Flynn’s inability to A) schedule his visits with any regularity, and B) stick to the appointments he did schedule, was just another point of proof in the design he had sketched of himself when she first met him, in another system and another time.
He was later than projected again today. But the crew’s spirits were high, their laughter and exited voices ringing under the high dome of the Shiva laser control center. Yori felt the relief bring down her own energy cycling as well, and she smiled as she made her way to her workstation. Any tick of the User’s absence was one too many these days, and every visit a cause for celebration.
“I wonder if Flynn will come see us again this time,” Zava said to Quolli as the map on their shared screen lit up with energy readings one sector at a time. “It’s been ages.”
“The User has better things to do with his time.” Sei looked up from her own workstation only long enough to send her sisters a reproachful look. “We should consider ourselves blessed he deigns to visit our world at all.”
Quolli huffed in annoyance, but Visper snorted. Sei was by far the most reverent out of the nine of them; Visper was definitely the least.
“Not this time, I don’t think,” Yori said in a more kindly tone of voice. “Tron has a lot of urgent business to discuss with him.”
As if summoned, a pair of arms wrapped around her waist just as she made to ascend the steps to her pod. The sparse circuits they held brushed Yori’s own, blazing a familiar greeting into her system, but she hadn’t needed the confirmation. She would know those arms anywhere. Her code would melt into his any time.
“Yes I do,” he said with a peck to her cheek. “And Clu hasn’t been too happy either.”
Bit looped around their heads to chime in: “No.”
With a blissful smile that even Clu’s perpetual crankiness couldn’t dim, Yori pressed her cheek to Tron’s and her back to his chest, pouring all her happy feelings into the open circuit between them as a ‘hello to you too’.
Ni and Teck giggled into their hands, but Visper loudly announced: “Look operative, programs, Security’s here.”
Sei rolled her eyes, but there was no real sting in her words. “Hurray, we can digitize without fear of errors!”
“We will once Tron finishes bug-checking the boss,” Pum teased.
Two snorts and a “Ha!” arose in perfect unison.
Smiling without a pixel of remorse, Tron gave Yori’s sides one last squeeze before stepping back. He gave Bit a playful bop. “Come on Bit, let’s get out of their way.”
“Yes!” Bit chirped, and flew up to zip around in circles near the escape hatch at the top of the dome.
Feet apart and hands clasped behind his back, Tron took his customary place in the middle of the walkway leading from the teleporter at the edge of the room to the escape pods arranged around their emergency launch chute in the center, at the perfectly calculated halfway point between zapping back to the Arcade from whence they’d come and shooting up to the surface of the Sea and the Portal high above them. The laser control crew could not err - must not and did not err - and should they err regardless, there was nothing a security program could do to fix it. The real reason Tron so often came down to oversee Flynn’s arrival was Yori, and everyone knew it. But that didn’t mean he let the opportunity to monitor the Shiva sisters’ operations go to waste.
Yori, in turn, settled into her pod and looked around. “Everybody set?”
A chorus of affirmatives rang out from her team in their pods, at their panels and in front of their screens. All processes in place, all equipment online, blinking and humming in anticipation. Flynn was waiting for them.
“Alright, here goes.”
Yori put her hands on the energy panels to either side of her, opening the circuit between herself and the laser control center. With every inhale and exhale, every cycle of energy, she let her mind fall deeper into operational patterns, her focus simultaneously narrowing and expanding. Her sense of self grew until she was 50% User-styled shell, 10% sister-subroutines, and 40% structure and contents of the laser control center itself, pressed in on all sides by the Sea.
Like this, she could almost see through the fabric of the world. Could almost see the lines of code, the energy streams, the data flow, see the distinction between LoraB the Creator and End User Flynn, see the tiny imperfections, smoothed out or remaining, of years of tweaks and edits and updates, see the scars in the code that bound them together, left 278 cycles ago when Uxi-SHV-20905 derezzed in a gridbug attack and End User Flynn turned SirenAnemone into Anemone-SHV-20905 to replace her; left when Zava-SHV-20905 derezzed on the MCP’s women’s game grid 360 cycles ago and her functions were reinstalled by Creator LoraB, animated by a new spark and equipped with a partial copy of Quolli-SHV-20905’s operational memories and settings; left when Rix-SHV-20905 derezzed due to a faulty update and User VeraWeissEncom wrote Pum-SHV-20905 to replace her 504 cycles ago.
Tron-JA-307020 was the only foreign process in the room, and Yori, SHV-20905, would have swallowed him up and spit out his fragmented code into the merciless virus of the Sea had he been anyone else.
Voice thick with electronic buzz, she declared: “Shiva laser, activate.”
And it was so.
One by one, the many energy regulation modules floating around the Portal came to life, the beams of their energy lines spearing the waters. Through the six massive, bent glass panels making up the dome of the control center, they could see the lights come down all around them, like light trails left by tank blasts, straight down until they bent at a sharp angle toward the control center and connected below the programs’ line of sight.
Zava and Quolli, their hands also pressed to their stations, counted down the beams with identical, static-laden voices. Quolli’s circuits flashed when the first one ignited; Zava’s when the last connected.
“Energy levels stabilized. Power regulation online,” Zava and Quolli announced in unison.
“Is the aperture clear, Flynn?” Teck asked aloud. Her voice did not echo as it would have done in the old system, but the platform she stood on was lit with circuits as bright, intricate and colorful as Encom 511 had been, and the powers coursing through her could be felt in every corner of the room.
For a long moment, they waited, breath caught in everyone’s throats no matter how often they had done this before.
Then, booming:
YES
“Aperture clear,” Teck said, grinning hugely. “Proceed, programs.”
Sei pressed a hand to the energy panel in her workstation. “Laser active in 3... 2... 1... now! Scan commencing.”
“Gathering data,” Anemone, Pum and Visper chorused, hands on their energy panels.
A holographic projector blinked to life. Pixel by pixel, Flynn’s image appeared, surrounded by statistics and readings. The trio’s eyes were glazed over and the movement of their hands across their control panels was robotic from the strain of processing so much data at such speeds. But much of the information they needed was already stored in the team’s memory from previous digitizations, which sped up the process.
Their gazes cleared before long, and after a last few decisive taps to their control panels, all three of them nodded to Sei, who declared: “Scan complete. Remodulating laser output... and... go ahead.”
“Now dematerializing target,” Yori said. On the other side of the room, in her own pod, Ni mimicked Yori’s pose and joined the center circuit. They reached out to each other as one - their code connected - Pum, Visper and Anemone added their computational power...
Yori processed a quick, faint impression of Tron’s eyes on her, bright with pride and love, and then there was nothing but calculations for a while.
Matter to data.
“Dematerialization complete. Now digitizing data.”
Data to code.
“Digitization complete. Now compiling simulation.”
And far across the Sea of Simulation, in the heart of the Grid, deep inside Tron City, sat Flynn, tangible and functional.
“Digitization successful,” Yori said, aware again, from one moment to the next, of the words before they left her mouth.
Teck confirmed: “The User has arrived.”
“Energy levels equalized,” Zava reported.
“The Portal is stable,” Quolli said.
“The laser is now in stand-by mode and will remain so for the next 9 microcycles and 75 nanocycles, unless reactivated by User Flynn.” Sei nodded, pleased.
Yori leaned back in her seat and took a deep breath. “Anything else to report?”
Nine ‘nothing’s.
“Then we are done.” She lifted her hands from the almost uncomfortably warm energy panels. “Good work, programs!”
The sisters cheered.
Yori opened her pod, not surprised to find Tron at her side, holding out a hand to help her up. “No errors, bugs or glitches,” he said. “Another boring report. Excellent work, program.”
“Don’t worry Tron, I’m sure there are plenty of other functions causing anomalies for you to fight,” Anemone said wryly in passing, patting his shoulder with a hand almost as dark as his suit. The others laughed, but Tron made that scrunched-up face he was so prone to.
Yori reached up on her tip-toes to kiss the frown lines from between his eyes. “Go, you. Do your thing with Flynn and make sure we get to send him back in one piece.” Then she hugged him tight, circuits blazing. “I love you, Tron.”
He sighed in resignation, but returned the hug. “I love you too, Yori.” Looking around, he spotted Bit, already accosted by Pum and Teck. “Stay here and keep the Shiva crew company for me, alright Bit?”
The binary critter came zooming at them, leaving Yori’s sisters pouting and ‘oww’ing. “Yes!”
But Yori suggested: “Why don’t you take Bit along for support? He can conk Flynn over the head if he refuses to listen again.”
Bit hesitantly shifted values. “Yes?”
“Maybe some other time, when things are quieter,” Tron told Yori, then added to Bit: “The line of fire is no place for a bit, take it from me.”
“No!” Bit said, at the same time Yori exclaimed, “Line of fire?!”
“That’s what it feels like whenever Flynn tries for conflict negotiation these days,” Tron said grimly. He poked Bit’s grey neutral planes. “So stay.”
“Yes.”
When he drew her in for one last hug, he radiated weariness. Yori was probably the only program on the Grid who knew how much the constant ISO-Basic tensions, on top of the ever-increasing numbers of bugs, faults and glitches and the inexplicable recent viral outbreak, which had cost the lives of so many newly rezzed security monitors - written and installed in such a hurry they hadn’t even been given a name - were wearing him down. He wasn’t made for diplomacy, in code or spirit.
“I would be right there beside you if I could,” she said.
“You’ll be the first to hear if I have any good news,” he promised.
She nodded, willing love and support to flow from her circuits to his with every character of her being. “And Tron, if all else fails, remind him again of what I said.”
“Turn the computer off for the night.”
“Or the week.”
“Or however long it takes for him to pull his processes together and find a solution,” he finished, straightening and nodding briskly. “I will. See you later.”
Yori kept her fingers curled loosely around his arm as he walked away, until finally his palm and fingertips slipped from her grasp.
It was true, of course, that Flynn was too busy to make social calls these days. But that had never stopped him before. Yori was pretty sure he just didn’t want to have to face her anymore.
Laser Control (WORK IN PROGRESS)
01 - Digitized
02 - Blackout
03 - Coup
Digitization: one part magic, three parts hard work by Yori and the rest of the laser control crew. Resistance: the only thinkable course of action when red once again swarms the system and takes Tron away from her.
Author’s Note: Vaguely AU for Evolution, because while I like the new characters it introduces, I prefer different versions of Tron and Quorra’s backstory. Seriously, they have like three different canon versions each, depending on what part of the franchise you’re looking at.
The underwater control center was bright and loud with activity when Yori, Visper and Anemone teleported in. A quick look around told Yori they were the last to arrive; the rest of the laser control crew was already busily calibrating pods, opening windows on their display panels, and otherwise preparing for the work ahead. The others must have still been in the nearby residential folder, dutifully awaiting Flynn’s arrival, when the Call came. Yori had given up such piety long ago. Flynn’s inability to A) schedule his visits with any regularity, and B) stick to the appointments he did schedule, was just another point of proof in the design he had sketched of himself when she first met him, in another system and another time.
He was later than projected again today. But the crew’s spirits were high, their laughter and exited voices ringing under the high dome of the Shiva laser control center. Yori felt the relief bring down her own energy cycling as well, and she smiled as she made her way to her workstation. Any tick of the User’s absence was one too many these days, and every visit a cause for celebration.
“I wonder if Flynn will come see us again this time,” Zava said to Quolli as the map on their shared screen lit up with energy readings one sector at a time. “It’s been ages.”
“The User has better things to do with his time.” Sei looked up from her own workstation only long enough to send her sisters a reproachful look. “We should consider ourselves blessed he deigns to visit our world at all.”
Quolli huffed in annoyance, but Visper snorted. Sei was by far the most reverent out of the nine of them; Visper was definitely the least.
“Not this time, I don’t think,” Yori said in a more kindly tone of voice. “Tron has a lot of urgent business to discuss with him.”
As if summoned, a pair of arms wrapped around her waist just as she made to ascend the steps to her pod. The sparse circuits they held brushed Yori’s own, blazing a familiar greeting into her system, but she hadn’t needed the confirmation. She would know those arms anywhere. Her code would melt into his any time.
“Yes I do,” he said with a peck to her cheek. “And Clu hasn’t been too happy either.”
Bit looped around their heads to chime in: “No.”
With a blissful smile that even Clu’s perpetual crankiness couldn’t dim, Yori pressed her cheek to Tron’s and her back to his chest, pouring all her happy feelings into the open circuit between them as a ‘hello to you too’.
Ni and Teck giggled into their hands, but Visper loudly announced: “Look operative, programs, Security’s here.”
Sei rolled her eyes, but there was no real sting in her words. “Hurray, we can digitize without fear of errors!”
“We will once Tron finishes bug-checking the boss,” Pum teased.
Two snorts and a “Ha!” arose in perfect unison.
Smiling without a pixel of remorse, Tron gave Yori’s sides one last squeeze before stepping back. He gave Bit a playful bop. “Come on Bit, let’s get out of their way.”
“Yes!” Bit chirped, and flew up to zip around in circles near the escape hatch at the top of the dome.
Feet apart and hands clasped behind his back, Tron took his customary place in the middle of the walkway leading from the teleporter at the edge of the room to the escape pods arranged around their emergency launch chute in the center, at the perfectly calculated halfway point between zapping back to the Arcade from whence they’d come and shooting up to the surface of the Sea and the Portal high above them. The laser control crew could not err - must not and did not err - and should they err regardless, there was nothing a security program could do to fix it. The real reason Tron so often came down to oversee Flynn’s arrival was Yori, and everyone knew it. But that didn’t mean he let the opportunity to monitor the Shiva sisters’ operations go to waste.
Yori, in turn, settled into her pod and looked around. “Everybody set?”
A chorus of affirmatives rang out from her team in their pods, at their panels and in front of their screens. All processes in place, all equipment online, blinking and humming in anticipation. Flynn was waiting for them.
“Alright, here goes.”
Yori put her hands on the energy panels to either side of her, opening the circuit between herself and the laser control center. With every inhale and exhale, every cycle of energy, she let her mind fall deeper into operational patterns, her focus simultaneously narrowing and expanding. Her sense of self grew until she was 50% User-styled shell, 10% sister-subroutines, and 40% structure and contents of the laser control center itself, pressed in on all sides by the Sea.
Like this, she could almost see through the fabric of the world. Could almost see the lines of code, the energy streams, the data flow, see the distinction between LoraB the Creator and End User Flynn, see the tiny imperfections, smoothed out or remaining, of years of tweaks and edits and updates, see the scars in the code that bound them together, left 278 cycles ago when Uxi-SHV-20905 derezzed in a gridbug attack and End User Flynn turned SirenAnemone into Anemone-SHV-20905 to replace her; left when Zava-SHV-20905 derezzed on the MCP’s women’s game grid 360 cycles ago and her functions were reinstalled by Creator LoraB, animated by a new spark and equipped with a partial copy of Quolli-SHV-20905’s operational memories and settings; left when Rix-SHV-20905 derezzed due to a faulty update and User VeraWeissEncom wrote Pum-SHV-20905 to replace her 504 cycles ago.
Tron-JA-307020 was the only foreign process in the room, and Yori, SHV-20905, would have swallowed him up and spit out his fragmented code into the merciless virus of the Sea had he been anyone else.
Voice thick with electronic buzz, she declared: “Shiva laser, activate.”
And it was so.
One by one, the many energy regulation modules floating around the Portal came to life, the beams of their energy lines spearing the waters. Through the six massive, bent glass panels making up the dome of the control center, they could see the lights come down all around them, like light trails left by tank blasts, straight down until they bent at a sharp angle toward the control center and connected below the programs’ line of sight.
Zava and Quolli, their hands also pressed to their stations, counted down the beams with identical, static-laden voices. Quolli’s circuits flashed when the first one ignited; Zava’s when the last connected.
“Energy levels stabilized. Power regulation online,” Zava and Quolli announced in unison.
“Is the aperture clear, Flynn?” Teck asked aloud. Her voice did not echo as it would have done in the old system, but the platform she stood on was lit with circuits as bright, intricate and colorful as Encom 511 had been, and the powers coursing through her could be felt in every corner of the room.
For a long moment, they waited, breath caught in everyone’s throats no matter how often they had done this before.
Then, booming:
YES
“Aperture clear,” Teck said, grinning hugely. “Proceed, programs.”
Sei pressed a hand to the energy panel in her workstation. “Laser active in 3... 2... 1... now! Scan commencing.”
“Gathering data,” Anemone, Pum and Visper chorused, hands on their energy panels.
A holographic projector blinked to life. Pixel by pixel, Flynn’s image appeared, surrounded by statistics and readings. The trio’s eyes were glazed over and the movement of their hands across their control panels was robotic from the strain of processing so much data at such speeds. But much of the information they needed was already stored in the team’s memory from previous digitizations, which sped up the process.
Their gazes cleared before long, and after a last few decisive taps to their control panels, all three of them nodded to Sei, who declared: “Scan complete. Remodulating laser output... and... go ahead.”
“Now dematerializing target,” Yori said. On the other side of the room, in her own pod, Ni mimicked Yori’s pose and joined the center circuit. They reached out to each other as one - their code connected - Pum, Visper and Anemone added their computational power...
Yori processed a quick, faint impression of Tron’s eyes on her, bright with pride and love, and then there was nothing but calculations for a while.
Matter to data.
“Dematerialization complete. Now digitizing data.”
Data to code.
“Digitization complete. Now compiling simulation.”
And far across the Sea of Simulation, in the heart of the Grid, deep inside Tron City, sat Flynn, tangible and functional.
“Digitization successful,” Yori said, aware again, from one moment to the next, of the words before they left her mouth.
Teck confirmed: “The User has arrived.”
“Energy levels equalized,” Zava reported.
“The Portal is stable,” Quolli said.
“The laser is now in stand-by mode and will remain so for the next 9 microcycles and 75 nanocycles, unless reactivated by User Flynn.” Sei nodded, pleased.
Yori leaned back in her seat and took a deep breath. “Anything else to report?”
Nine ‘nothing’s.
“Then we are done.” She lifted her hands from the almost uncomfortably warm energy panels. “Good work, programs!”
The sisters cheered.
Yori opened her pod, not surprised to find Tron at her side, holding out a hand to help her up. “No errors, bugs or glitches,” he said. “Another boring report. Excellent work, program.”
“Don’t worry Tron, I’m sure there are plenty of other functions causing anomalies for you to fight,” Anemone said wryly in passing, patting his shoulder with a hand almost as dark as his suit. The others laughed, but Tron made that scrunched-up face he was so prone to.
Yori reached up on her tip-toes to kiss the frown lines from between his eyes. “Go, you. Do your thing with Flynn and make sure we get to send him back in one piece.” Then she hugged him tight, circuits blazing. “I love you, Tron.”
He sighed in resignation, but returned the hug. “I love you too, Yori.” Looking around, he spotted Bit, already accosted by Pum and Teck. “Stay here and keep the Shiva crew company for me, alright Bit?”
The binary critter came zooming at them, leaving Yori’s sisters pouting and ‘oww’ing. “Yes!”
But Yori suggested: “Why don’t you take Bit along for support? He can conk Flynn over the head if he refuses to listen again.”
Bit hesitantly shifted values. “Yes?”
“Maybe some other time, when things are quieter,” Tron told Yori, then added to Bit: “The line of fire is no place for a bit, take it from me.”
“No!” Bit said, at the same time Yori exclaimed, “Line of fire?!”
“That’s what it feels like whenever Flynn tries for conflict negotiation these days,” Tron said grimly. He poked Bit’s grey neutral planes. “So stay.”
“Yes.”
When he drew her in for one last hug, he radiated weariness. Yori was probably the only program on the Grid who knew how much the constant ISO-Basic tensions, on top of the ever-increasing numbers of bugs, faults and glitches and the inexplicable recent viral outbreak, which had cost the lives of so many newly rezzed security monitors - written and installed in such a hurry they hadn’t even been given a name - were wearing him down. He wasn’t made for diplomacy, in code or spirit.
“I would be right there beside you if I could,” she said.
“You’ll be the first to hear if I have any good news,” he promised.
She nodded, willing love and support to flow from her circuits to his with every character of her being. “And Tron, if all else fails, remind him again of what I said.”
“Turn the computer off for the night.”
“Or the week.”
“Or however long it takes for him to pull his processes together and find a solution,” he finished, straightening and nodding briskly. “I will. See you later.”
Yori kept her fingers curled loosely around his arm as he walked away, until finally his palm and fingertips slipped from her grasp.
It was true, of course, that Flynn was too busy to make social calls these days. But that had never stopped him before. Yori was pretty sure he just didn’t want to have to face her anymore.
Laser Control (WORK IN PROGRESS)
01 - Digitized
02 - Blackout
03 - Coup
Digitization: one part magic, three parts hard work by Yori and the rest of the laser control crew. Resistance: the only thinkable course of action when red once again swarms the system and takes Tron away from her.